Page 28 of Blade

Jolene shakes her head. “Oh, fuck him.Dr. Fear,” she says in a mocking tone. “Fucking mindfucker, right.”

I nod, see a flash of Kayla’s face.

Jolene stands, walks to me, and pulls me close, her hand cradling the back of my head.

“You changed that night—after what happened in the field. We never talked about it again.”

I shake my head as I hold back tears. That night was the start of everything.

“You turned out to be the strongest of us all.”

“No,” I tell her. “That wasn’t strength. It was terror.”

Chapter Ten

Excerpt from Testimony of Mio Akasawa

Ada Olson: Why was it so hard for these girls? The Orphans?

Mio Akasawa: You have to understand something about The Palace. Dawn wrote that whole book about her Fear Training, like she could build an army of loyal robots. But girls are not machines. Their bodies get hurt, and their brains long for things that have nothing to do with skating. No one was there to help them with any of that. But even worse—some were just waiting to take advantage of them.

Ada Olson: Like who? Emile Dresiér?

Mio Akasawa: Emile, the other skaters, the mothers in the stands, the world outside—something bad was bound to happen.

Ada Olson: You mean what happened in the field?

Mio Akasawa: Yes. But first, what happened to Indy.

Chapter Eleven

Ana

Before—Eight Months at The Palace

As on the other nights they went to the field, they started at Avery Hall, in the bathroom where the mirror was big enough for all of them to stand before it, putting on makeup like Kayla’s—thick stripes of black and red. Eyes and lips transforming. They wore shirts that fell off one shoulder. Jolene said this was always sexy and had not, according to Kayla, “gone out of fashion in the 1980s.”

And now the conversation continued from the locker room, where they’d practically kidnapped Indy after one of the bleacher bees helped her off the ice and all the way to the bench by her locker. Not to be kind, Jolene reminded them, but to revel in Indy’s epic fall, which had taken down part of the set and disrupted the entire show.

It had felt like a spy mission, getting her out of The Palace without Patrice or Dawn seeing them. Ana had to get her own skates off, and the costume, then help Indy with hers, while she was crying, sobbing so hard she couldn’t tell them what had happened. Why she’d tried the triple Axel, knowing she couldn’t land it. Knowing that the ice wasn’t big enough for one of her falls tonight with the curtain and the props.

Kayla shoved her costume, and Ana’s, into Shannon’s hands and told her to take them back to the second rink. Indy was supposed to meet Patrice there after her solo. Shannon agreed, even though she’d already returned hers. She wanted to be their friend, and this was a chance to prove it.

From there, they crossed over to the men’s locker room. The back door exited to the parking lot, and Jolene ran ahead to get her car.

It was then, in the back seat of Jolene’s Jeep, that Indy finally caught her breath and told them about the fight she’d had with her mother.

“I can’t go home,” Indy said, wiping her runny nose with the back of her hand. “I tried to talk to her about Bobby, and she wouldn’t listen.”

Jolene turned around when they got to a stop sign. “We know, Indy,” she said.

Kayla looked back, too, from the passenger seat. “But what the fuck with the triple Axel?”

“I was just so mad at her!”

“But you hurtyourself, Indy. Not your mother,” Jolene said, stepping on the gas.

Indy laughed through the tears. “Don’t be so sure.”